? Are you leaguers, or covenanters, or
associators? What has the poor dead man done to nettle you? Were his
rebels your friends or your relations? Were your Norman ancestors of
any of those families, which were conspirators in the play? I smell a
rat in this business; Henry III. is not taken thus to task for
nothing. Let me tell you, this is little better than an implicit
confession of the parallel I intended. This gentleman of Valois sticks
in your stomachs; and, though I do not defend his proceedings in the
States, any otherwise than by the inevitable necessity which caused
them, yet acknowledging his crime does not extenuate their guilt that
forced him to it. It was bad on both sides, but the revenge was not so
wicked as the treason; for it was a voluntary act of theirs, and a
compelled one of his. The short on't is, he took a violent course to
cut up the Covenant by the roots; and there is your quarrel to him.
Now for a long-winded panegyric of the king of Navarre; and here I am
sure they are in earnest, when they take such overpains to prove there
is no likeness where they say I intended it. The hero, at whom their
malice is levelled, does but laugh at it, I believe; and, amongst the
other virtues of that predecessor, wants neither his justice nor his
clemency, to forgive all the heads of the League, as fast as they
submit. As for obliging them, (which our author would fain hook in for
an ingredient) let them be satisfied, that no more enemies are to be
bought off with places and preferments; the trial which has been made
in two kings reigns, will warn the family from so fruitless and
dangerous an expedient.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226